"You Deserve This, You Do Not Deserve This"

"You Deserve This, You Do Not Deserve This"

Normally I hate to write Artist Statements but, I think the driving forces of this ought to be known being that this is the first honest piece of art I think I have made in a while if not ever made and I want that honesty more forthright than attempted in this piece.

The title arrived from letters from my ex-girlfriend. I found one she had written to me last summer congratulating me on my first chapbook of poetry. She wrote "You deserve this." About three weeks ago (after being apart for nearly 8 months) we got in a fight and she said "I do not deserve this." We are no longer talking, but that is besides the point.

The idea is that we deserve to be the type of person we become because we allow ourselves to be that person and the backlash of our actions however, we do not always deserve. If anything we deserve to be pardoned from time to time, when appropriate that is.

In addition to the notion of what is "deserved" I have realized and maybe always knew what a narcissist I am but was always too afraid to admit my vanity. So to some effect I deserve this, and to another effect I feel as though I do not deserve what is sometimes out my control. And this is where I go on a tangent:

Facebook and the powers that be have created a network of narcissists and I am clearly apart of it and a contributor however, it is not what I initially desired and I am not so sure I got what I deserved. I thought it would be a great thing to be able to connect to friends and see what they were up to if I was not in the same physical space. For a while that was working and that was satisfying, it also allowed for: being spammed by an onslaught of photos, time consumption, time wasted, conversations never to be had in person, invitations to events I could care less about, invitations to participate in virtual games in a virtual world , and virtual surveys about now virtual people.

So why am I still apart of this network? Namely, fear and anxiety of a loss of connection and also that I am so utterly and painfully addicted to people. Now, this is where I should probably say, 'Because I am holier than thou, I will delete Facebook once and for all!' Who the fuck am I kidding? I am stuck in the trap that is my generation, I am too cynical to change it, and too weak to remove myself from it. No, I am not taking the role of victim, I am taking the role of a conscious member, observer, and am merely advocating for some discussion of opinion. Please, let's talk.

Oh yeah and about that art piece...to my ex-girlfriend, my apologies, my face got the better of me.

Call The Ball Black But The Doors Open. Be Healthy, Yeah?

Julie and Julia. It was a movie about blogging, I think. I saw it merely to hang out with one of the most lovely persons in the world. It was cute and I hate cute most of the time because my testosterone levels tell me to do so.

Anyways, that is not what I really wanted to write about but clearly I did because I just wrote it.

Last night was maybe one of the best nights of the summer. You know those nights so I won't have to go into great depth, at least I am hoping you do and if you haven't maybe I can spin one for you whoever YOU are.

The Toadstool Bookshop, more specifically, the music store, tucked away in the corner and framed in by the travel section and calendars is where two of the most influential people in my life have existed. One of which is leaving, going to China with his wife to teach English via film and their wits. The other may be there only for a little while longer, who knows.

I met them when I was a Freshman in high school, hair out to space, and all tie-dye. Music was my dad's record collection. It was the Allman Brothers, Phish, The Grateful Dead and nothing more and certainly nothing less. Until I met Ryan. Explosions in the Sky. The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. The earth truly was no longer a cold dead place.

From that point on it became a point of order to visit them whenever I came home. If I didn't get my weekly dose of the Toadstool, of that dynamic duo, of those beardoes my head was most likely hung between my feet.

Last night was a going away party for Ryan and his wife. Some of the most spectacular people were in attendance. It was hosted at Eric's, Ryan's partner in crime. The New England post-colonial home with wooden beams was decorated with immaculate art, immaculate warmth, and music. The community came together, brought food, drank together, laughed together.
At a certain point a few of us were in the adjacent river, near over-flowing from the flash floods we incurred yesterday. We sat back, drinking PBR and dug our feet into the gravelly bottom while Ryan floated up and down the river. It was the Toadstool stripped down. It was the summer coming to an end the way it ought to. It was a friend leaving.

But the night was not over and it was not just antics in the unforgiving river. Since I was unable to drink I smoked a joint which I haven't done in probably 6 months. It was the most mellow high I could ask for. After which I did an interview with one of the most thunderous voices I've ever heard, Atom the Motion and the Void. He was drunk, I was stoned, and we were maybe making sense, maybe. We talked for half an hour about identity, as a car, as a skeleton, as guilt, as a black ball with doors. Then we talked abour Ryan and his wife, Becky, and how I knew them.

The last thing I recall saying in the interview (that may potentially be on NHPR which, I hope for the sake of incoherency is not) was how the Peterborough community became most apparent to me when Ryan and I hugged each other for the first time a few weeks ago. That alone says something so vastly profound about this area and these people. Community, in my professional opinion, starts at your local record store.

I say to YOU, go talk to your record guys/gals, buy one album, share that album, love where you are from, contribute to the music that comes from where you reside, go back to the record store and repeat this process and in five years when these friends leave you, the record store guys/gals, or you are finding that you are settling and living elsewhere proceed to hug (mind you, this is not an endorsement for that Dave Matthews music video where he hugs everyone on this planet. I think that is an ad for pot, though this ramble included in some way my own advocacy for occasional pot use) and keep hugging...[because lord knows healthcare will not be available to you].

Love

Unfortunately, You Tube will not allow me to imbed this so you will just have to navigate your way to what I personally and boldly believe, is today's most important band.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIh3LkRdZpU

I am trying to capture that noise you make when you understand something so deeply the only way you can express it, is that inhale through your noise

Somewhere there has to be a clock, a notetaker, a document that has tallied all the lives I have looked at since Facebook has corrupted myself and my generation. It is the perfect tool for a surveyor, a voyeur, creeps, the interested, the curious, and myself...maybe somewhere in all of those categories I just listed.

If I knew the time I spent surveying the lives of others, I think I would feel far more depressed than by the time I could estimate, but the amount of time I will not estimate. Why is there this need to see into and not out to?

Since I was 13 or younger I can recall being so utterly fascinated everytime my family and I drove by the houses on Beacon Avenue in Boston. I wanted to know what was going on inside those homes; how those families were living as opposed to my own. What did their rooms look like? Just this past weekend my family and I were driving through Kennebunkport, Maine but this time it was my sister who was so interested. I almost wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to forget that the lives of others exist and that they exist on a plane foreign to my own.

What I am getting at here, maybe getting at, potentially arriving to is the paucity of newness in my life. Everyday is new so this sounds like it is nearly impossible but, I am in no way taking up the newness.

Everything is dying!

Why am I not writing as much? Why am I not reading as much? Why am I finding this helpful at 10 o'clock at night and mildly productive? Why am I asking someone else to look into my life when I just stated that I wanted to look out and by that virtue expect others to start looking out?

All I know is I am going to a funeral tomorrow, I am moving into an apartment in Chicago, and I am starting life anew, because I am given that chance.